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Sunday, July 6, 2014

Appalling Ignorance of World Leaders, Media and So-Called "Experts"

Sarah Honig, one of my favorite Jerusalem Post writers has an article in this Friday's edition that could be comic if the subject wasn't actually factual and serious, Another Tack: The Kay and Tim Show.

For some background information on myself, I used to be one of the most popular "settlers" for the international media and all sorts of groups to visit. My kids grew up with reporters and television crews who visited us more often than our relatives. Many times they'd have dinner with us and even sleep over. Not only was I a target to be questioned, but sometimes I'd have some very interesting conversations with the journalists, writers and editors of some of the largest most prestigious networks and newspapers in the world. One newspaper editor confided that he didn't hire Journalism graduates, because "they know no facts, only how to write. I prefer to hire those with degrees in History, Economics etc since they understand what is happening and have strong factual backgrounds."
This is something I haven't forgotten and certainly explains the total ignorance and incompetence that Honig describes in her article.

Kay and TimMaybe best calledTweedledee and Tweedledum

...There was a lot of back-and-forth about what language we speak. Tim referred to the distress call Gil-Ad made to the police. Deadpan, sounding very well-versed in the minutiae of esoteric Israel, Tim shared his wisdom: “I assume he was talking in Hebrew… Both his parents have Israeli Hebrew names.” Deep!Later on Tim also assumed, with equal erudition, that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would address the mourners in Hebrew, “although many people in Israel speak English.” Really deep!These profound linguistic insights were accompanied by abundant mispronunciations of everything from victim Gil-Ad’s name (he became Jilad some of the time) to Tim’s lack of familiarity with the name Etzion (which came out something like Zion). It was defined as an illegal settlement deep in the Palestinian heartland, which the boys had visited…Okay, so Tim the expert didn’t know that Kfar Etzion was a well-established Jewish community before the state of Israel was born on May 14, 1948. Kfar Etzion was besieged by the Jordanian Legion – British-trained, British-equipped and British-led...

Today's journalists and media personalities don't get their positions due to their knowledge of history, geography, political science etc. They are chosen for looks, style and charisma. Fact-checking is definitely not done by editors who nowadays know little more than their writers. Publishers and producers are mostly concerned with the financial bottom line, not truth nor accuracy.

Unfortunately, the Israeli media is no better. Numerous times I've read and seen on TV Arabs blatantly lying about conditions and situations. For example claiming that there is no public transportation in the eastern aka Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem to other parts of the city, even though there are gorgeous spiffy new white buses that ply those apartheid Arab only routes. Instead of doing an easy investigation, the reporters just repeat the Arab lies. Well, now those same Arab neighborhoods are isolated due to the violence and damage done by the very same local Arabs.

And one more thing. I challenge all those who believe that there is such a thing as a "Palestinian people" sic to list a timeline of events and leaders to compare with the History of the Jewish People over the past four thousand years, OK, three thousand years, and if that's too hard how about a thousand or a hundred years... And of course I expect you to document it, please.